Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (Live Girls Series)

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: After reading colonize this I was filled with a sense of all the possibilities of life, a sense of courage and a feeling that being a woman of color was not a life-sentence. Instead the women who wrote in this book made me feel that I didn't have to fit into someone else's mold of what it was I should be. Instead I could choose to love and live and learn the way that I felt was right what my heart told me.

Rating:
Summary: Hope for a new radical feminism
Review: Antonio Gramsci once said "we are forced into an interregnum in which the old is dying and new cannot yet be born". 'Colonize This!...' is the new being born. Arriving at a moment when feminism is thought to have been 'achieved' by so many people and more women choose not to identify as feminist, this book announces a thunderous revolt.

The editors have selected writing by young women of color that is so compelling you'll have a hard time putting this down. A mixed-race woman describes how her supposedly liberal father, who taught her about black feminism, is having sexual encounters with many women of color, and abusing her mother. This piece is a reminder that male liberalism is not synonymous with an anti-patriarchal, anti-white supremacist politics.

The book is also accessible to people in a wide age range, so important at a time when radical feminism is being untaught or worse, ignored, at so many levels of public and private education.

Alongside Gloria Anzaldua and Ana Louis Keating's 'revisiting' book, 'This Bridge Called Home', 'Colonize This!' is an important reminder that, as Arundati Roy said, "another world is possible". The aim of both volumes is to demystify threadbare feminist certainties and re-radicalize the ongoing project of tearing down the massive structural forces of patriarchy, white supremacy, and homophobia.

Rating:
Summary: Edgy Third Wave Book
Review: Colonize This will make some readers uncomfortable to the contributors' honesty and in some cases anger. The various entries bring race to the center stage and this in itself will cause some readers to shift uncomfortably as they re-think their own particular privilege.

This book is ideal in a women's studies classroom or ethnic studies, english, or sociology. I think the book would be best served by also reading _This Bridge Called My Back_, since so many of the contributors refer to _Bridge_ as causing their "click" of feminism.

Colonize This isn't your typical academic tome, but a personal (and political) book that should cause some lively debate.

Rating:
Summary: an amazing anthology
Review: i recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about women of color. many of the essays address common misonceptions, such as the oxymoron of "Arab feminism" discussed by Susan Muaddi Darraj. this book provides an opportunity to learn about a broad range of issues within a single volume. the diversity of topics makes this collection a must-have for all seekers of knowledge.

Rating:
Summary: gives good insight
Review: i recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about women of color. many of the essays address common misonceptions, such as the oxymoron of "Arab feminism" discussed by Susan Muaddi Darraj. this book provides an opportunity to learn about a broad range of issues within a single volume. the diversity of topics makes this collection a must-have for all seekers of knowledge.

Rating:
Summary: In response to "racist"
Review: In response to the last reviewer, it is always interesting how the very people who perpetuate racism and the oppression of people of color are the first to denouce as 'racist' any argument against (or God forbid, anger towards) the system that keeps colored people oppressed. The previous reviewer should consider the notion that maybe these women didn't need anything but the experience of their own lives to know that the world is stacked against them as women of color. He should also wonder if his inability to believe the pain of others is a reflection of his inability to acknowledge the privledge he takes for granted. The is an excellent book, and will be an excellent read for anyone with an open mind or a capacity to listen to the feelings and ideas of others.

Rating:
Summary: racist
Review: One day, after four months working in a largely white-staffed major chain bookstore, I discovered this book on the shelf. By the end, I was left wishing I had been able to submit a piece and hoping that I would one day find these other women.

I was excited to see the inclusion of American Indian women; we are all too often tossed aside- not only by anti-Indianist mainstream society, but by other people of color themselves. Hernandez' book is not only hers, not only the contributors', but all women of color's. These are individual voices of passionate and determined women of color, which are the real voices of feminism today, not the pedagogical discourse with which all women's studies majors are bombarded.

I enjoyed the stories of other queer women of color. I do not believe that these should be difficult to understand or relate to by straight women, after all, are not all queer women forced by society to understand the stories and trials of heterosexuality? I applaud Hernandez, not only for including the stories of queer women of color, but celebrating them as well.

At the United States Student Association, when someone calls "Holla Back," the room resounds with "I've got your back!" To all the women of color in the world- the editor and contributors of this book have got yours.

Rating:
Summary: I've Got Your Back!
Review: One day, after four months working in a largely white-staffed major chain bookstore, I discovered this book on the shelf. By the end, I was left wishing I had been able to submit a piece and hoping that I would one day find these other women.

I was excited to see the inclusion of American Indian women; we are all too often tossed aside- not only by anti-Indianist mainstream society, but by other people of color themselves. Hernandez' book is not only hers, not only the contributors', but all women of color's. These are individual voices of passionate and determined women of color, which are the real voices of feminism today, not the pedagogical discourse with which all women's studies majors are bombarded.

I enjoyed the stories of other queer women of color. I do not believe that these should be difficult to understand or relate to by straight women, after all, are not all queer women forced by society to understand the stories and trials of heterosexuality? I applaud Hernandez, not only for including the stories of queer women of color, but celebrating them as well.

At the United States Student Association, when someone calls "Holla Back," the room resounds with "I've got your back!" To all the women of color in the world- the editor and contributors of this book have got yours.

Rating:
Summary: Thinking and Racism
Review: To think about racism is to be thoughtful. To be thoughtful is to be engaged in the process of learning. To refuse to reflect on and examine your belief systems is to be ignorant.